


three drops of blood

by allthelight



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, TAS Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22725754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthelight/pseuds/allthelight
Summary: '“I’m pregnant.”She had imagined it would have been harder to say but it slips out relatively easily, just the way she slipped out from underneath his arms into the cool of the night. It’s funny, the things that you always imagine are more difficult than they turn out to be.'Asriel and Marisa and three conversations that change everything and yet nothing at all.
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Comments: 15
Kudos: 104





	1. confession

**Author's Note:**

> this has been in my notes in my phone for *ages* and I'm so excited that it's finally finished and I can post the first part here now! It's such a relief to have the idea out from my head and in actual fic form so eeep. I am very excited about it!
> 
> This is a story in three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning and middle are pre-canon for the main series, and the end is AU but still canon-compliant. I feel like you could definitely slot it into The Amber Spyglass. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!

_**1\. confession** _

-x-

Asriel’s arms are warm and heavy around her as she contemplates whether or not to tell him.

This moment is nice. The world is dark and quiet and it feels like they are the centre of it, the two of them wrapped up in each other in his bed like this. Any words spoken now would ruin the silence, but she has been distracted ever since finding out and she doesn’t like her mind being burdened like this, her thoughts running sluggish like this. Keeping this to herself offers no advantage and so there is no harm in telling him. Besides, she’d rather not be alone.

First, she slides out from underneath his arms, shivering immediately at the sudden cold that assaults her bare skin. Asriel doesn’t take long to stir, moaning at the sudden loss, and when he opens his eyes, she has barely slid her robe on.

“Leaving me already?” He says, but his face is open and easy in the moonlight.

“I would wait until the morning. Sneaking around in the dark is not something I enjoy.”

He props himself up on an elbow. “However, it is exactly your style.”

She smiles, easy and free, and as she does, she wonders how many of these untouchable moments they have left.

“What is it?”

He has turned on a lamp, out of the sheets himself now and sitting on top of them. He looks at her strangely, head cocked slightly to the side, as if he is seeing something she doesn’t know in her face. It worries her. She has spent most of her life making herself inscrutable, training her facial muscles to respond to her every subconscious command. She controls everything except for the way she feels about him. That is something too wild to tame.

“What do you mean?”

He laughs lowly, entirely fitting for the half-light that enshrouds his bedroom. “It’s all over your face, Marisa. You cannot hide from me.”

“I don’t want to hide from you.” But she makes it seem like her transparency is a choice when, truly, it’s one of the most unconscious things about her. If she were so open and honest around everybody then she might as well be dead.

“So what is it then?”

A deep breath. “I’m pregnant.”

She had imagined it would have been harder to say but it slips out relatively easily, just the way she slipped out from underneath his arms into the cool of the night. It’s funny, the things that you always imagine are more difficult than they turn out to be.

The only immediate change in Asriel’s face is the fraction his eyebrow rises. Then he nods slightly, chewing on his bottom lip, a tell he isn’t aware that he has. Stelmaria, who was entwined with the golden monkey at the foot of the bed, raises her head, but her amber eyes remain calm.

He says nothing but he gets out of bed, beginning to pace ever so slowly beside it. Suddenly she would like nothing more than to be wrapped up in his arms again, to go back to sleep and exist only in the dreamworld.

“Well?” She prompts, crossing her arms impatiently. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

“Are you sure it’s mine?”

Of all the things she expected, she didn’t expect this. She huffs. “Shirking responsibility already, Asriel? How awfully you.”

“Well one can never be too sure with you, Marisa. Who knows, you could have a dozen more suitors on the side. I would never put it past you.”

But he says it like a compliment, with that slight grin on his face, and it makes it terribly hard to be angry and afraid.

“You’re a bastard.”

“Yes,” he says thoughtfully, smile slipping. “Maybe I am.”

There’s no need to tell him that this creature inside of her is half of them both. She is as exact in this as she is exact with everything in her life. Babies are unpredictable; they come early and they come late and sometimes they come not at all. There will be something she can concoct to satisfy her husband. It wasn’t quite him she was worried about.

She wishes he would say something more than what he is, but she is aware that he is thinking deeply, plans already forming in his mind just as they have already formed in hers. She would like it if he voiced them, but then he would ask that she voiced what’s in her own head. That’s not how their partnership works. It never has been.

Asriel goes over to the window, looking out at the utter blackness that surrounds them. It feels like they are the only two people awake, the only two people alive. Well three, she supposes. How delightful if that were only the case.

“He could kill me for this you know.”

Asriel’s voice is a surprise, as is the tone it harbours. He doesn’t sound angry or upset. Not even surprised himself. Just deeply thoughtful, as if he’s not fully present but half somewhere else entirely.

Marisa comes to stand beside him, wrapping her robe tighter around herself. There is no need to confirm who Asriel is speaking about. “He could have killed you a long time ago.”

Asriel turns to her. “With no proof? He only had his suspicions before, Marisa. Now, however, there will be something ultimate. Something irrefutable.”

Edward is dull and vain. Unfortunately, he is not stupid, but he is easily blinded by his young wife’s beauty and utterly disarming smile. He has his suspicions, yes, but he never dares voice them. To voice them would be to make them real, and for them to be real would be just as much of a problem for him as it is for her. Edward Coulter, the great politician who couldn’t keep his wife satisfied in bed. She can see the headlines now and in any other circumstance, she would laugh.

“He wants a child,” she says. “He won’t look too much further as long as he gets what he wants.” She thinks of the pathetic look in his eyes that arises whenever they speak of the subject. “He wants something to mould. An heir. If he ever found out it wasn’t his… it would kill him.”

Asriel looks truly surprised and she wonders why until she realises that there is something like regret that has leached into her tone.

“And do you care how he feels, honestly? You’ve never had an aversion to causing pain before.”

“I don’t care to cause it unnecessarily,” she tells him. Their voices are still soft, hushed in respect for the night, but they are moving into something deeper now. Just to see how far she can push it, she says, “He’s been good to me.”

Edward has been mediocre at best. She has no real feelings for the man and if he dropped dead tomorrow, she knows she probably wouldn’t give too much thought to it. But Asriel is looking at her like he’s surprised at her and she likes that, she likes making him think that he doesn’t know her as completely as he does.

It has the desired effect. Asriel snorts. “He gave you status and a title and nothing else. That doesn’t mean he is good.”

“How very easy for you to say,” she almost-hisses. Their daemons, behind them, have yet to withdraw from each other. “You have all these things already.”

She is a woman in a world dominated by men and she detests it. Perhaps if she were as high-born as Asriel she would have had some sort of chance on her own but she isn’t. The only thing she has in her own right, the only thing she has ever had, is her intelligence. Her plans, her schemes, they all come from her mind. They are her own, nobody else’s. Many look at her and see Marisa Coulter, wife of Edward Coulter. They see a pretty smile with pretty eyes and curls that bounce when she walks. Her intelligence is not doubted, but rarely does anyone ever want to see it. For as long as she lives, she fears, her husband will be the most interesting thing about her.

She hates all of them who look right past her, who shake her hand limply and then go straight to her husband, almost salivating at the mouth for his approval, craving it with everything they have. They crave her, eventually, but it’s her long lashes and charming laugh and, while she supposes their thoughts are scientific at least, they are not concerned with her brain at all.

Asriel knows her position, but he rarely makes an effort to understand it. And why would he? He has the triplicate: a man, titled, and with more money than the King. He breezes through life and the only things that trouble him are the things he chooses to let trouble him. He has no idea what it’s like to claw and scrape at a ladder that nobody lets you climb and she would very much like to see him try. She doubts he’d be so good at the game if he were playing it from her side.

“Don’t act like some poor trophy wife, Marisa,” he tells her, teeth showing. “Edward’s just a part of a scheme to you. He’s more of the victim in this than you are.”

“And don’t you act as though you suddenly feel sorry for him.”

“On the contrary,” Asriel says, turning back to the window. “I feel less than nothing for him.”

But that’s not true and both of them know it, both of them just know there’s nothing to be done about it.

There’s a silence, one that neither of them is eager to fill. Their daemons have moved away from each other, Marisa can feel it in her chest, but they remain close by each other. If she were to turn around and look back at the bed, she would see them regarding each other longingly, but no longer able to touch each other, too afraid of what would happen if they tried.

“This child… it will ruin everything.”

It’s the first time that something of what she is feeling has leaked into her voice. The truth in it surprises her. She blames the dark. It makes for careless tongues. Anything may come spilling out.

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Asriel says. “If anything, it secures your position with him. The child will be yours and his to raise.”

It ignites something within her, a fire in her belly that burns away all of her fears and doubts.

“Is this why you are so calm about it? Because you know it’s not your responsibility? How typical of you. How utterly typical. Do you know how hard I’ve worked to get where I am? I don’t want some child ruining it all. I’m not a mother.”

“No.” His voice has gone soft again. “You aren’t. But what can I do? This child can never be mine.” He shrugs. “This is the way it has to be.”

The reality of it is rather sobering. He is right, as infuriating as it may be. This child, this product of the two of them, could never be his child. They can plan and scheme to their hearts’ content but it doesn’t change the truth: she is Mrs Marisa _Coulter,_ and that doesn’t stop mattering just because they want it to.

He looks at her then, finally, and his eyes are clouded now, troubled. She would ask him to share but she knows that he wouldn’t.

“Asriel,” she begins lowly, sounding her age for once. “This will change things between us.”

“Yes, it will.” Something passes across his face, but it is gone as quickly as it came. “But not tonight. Let’s go back to sleep.”

Marisa imagines that he holds her tighter as the night drags sluggishly onwards. She cannot sleep, however, and neither can he and soon there’s nothing for it. She shifts to face him and finds him looking at her already, with a tender expression on his face that she doesn’t know what to make of. His hands, she has just realised, burn pleasantly on the area of her stomach.

“I’ll keep you safe,” he whispers. “I’ll make sure you and the child are provided for.”

“We both know you can’t promise that.”

“I’ll find a way. Let Edward look into the child’s face and see himself, let him mould them into his image.” His voice becomes more insistent. “You and I shall know the truth.”

There’s a terrible realisation that comes into her head, now. It makes her feel sick. “But Asriel,” she says, voice trembling slightly. “What if the child doesn’t look like Edward?”

It’s a reasonable fear to have. The genes in Asriel must be just as dominant as him. There shall be no hiding it.

“It won’t come to that-”

“But if it does-”

He sighs, shifting her slightly in his arms. For a second she feels safe and, dare she say it, loved.

“Then we take her and we run.”

Marisa’s breath hitches. “Her?”

He looks caught out, almost boy-ish, and she wonders what’s going on inside his head, what dreams he’s been having to himself. “Yes,” he whispers, slightly sheepish. “I don’t know… any child of ours… it seems like they would have to be a girl.”

She makes a noise in the back of her throat and turns slowly away from him. He falls asleep before her, arms never moving from around her waist, and she listens to the deep hush of his breathing. She could leave right now if she wanted to, extricate herself piece by piece. She could put herself back together and try to go on with what she has. It would be the sensible thing to do, the safer option.

But she doesn’t do that. Instead she allows herself to fall asleep, too, and she dreams of a child with dark hair, dark eyes and a triumphant smile. She dreams of a baby with her father’s face, that may soon be the undoing of them all.


	2. atonement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You shouldn’t be here,” she says, a lot cooler than she feels. It’s been months since they’ve spoken, properly spoken, and the shock of seeing him here like this, standing in front of her, will take a while to wear off. He looks more or less the same as he did, perhaps just a few more lines around the eyes and a slight thinness to the face. A face that’s still infuriatingly triumphant, in spite of everything. 
> 
> “Would you rather see me in a jail cell?” His voice is tight, Stelmaria looking ready to pounce. “I’m sorry to disappoint.”
> 
> Asriel comes to see Marisa after the trial ends. Part 2 out of 3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 out of 3. This one is a little bit angsty but you know, they're both angry and hurt and also still kind of attracted to each other because that's just who they are. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading the first part, for leaving kudos and lovely comments. I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoy this part, also!

_**2\. atonement** _

-x-

She’s expecting him.

The trial ended only hours ago, and since it ended all she’s done is sit home alone in the dark, waiting and bracing herself for the headlines that will appear tomorrow. Her name will be on everyone’s lips and the whispers will be unbearable. People used to look at her with envy and now they look at her with disgust. Her skin crawls with it

She’s tried the best she could. She’s tried to distance herself from it as much as she can, but it won’t be enough. It still happened. The nightmare was real. As hard as she tries she can never forget it, and nobody else can either.

The verdict was brought to her by servants, their hushed whispers not quite hushed enough to evade the monkey that can stray further from her than they know. Asriel’s lands, his money… all of it gone just like that. It will hurt him, definitely, and she thinks _good._

The child, placed in a nunnery, doesn’t feature in her concerns. It’s not as though Marisa had anything to do with her anyway. Out of sight and out of mind, so they say. She will grow up well. Marisa doesn’t care. It’s Asriel she wants to hurt, for it was him who this started with and so naturally it’s him who it must end with.

He doesn’t knock at her front door and instead just strolls right in. The monkey knew before she did, sensing Stelmaria before Asriel even threw open the door. _Traitor_ she thinks, and knows that he doesn’t care.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says, a lot cooler than she feels. It’s been months since they’ve spoken, properly spoken, and the shock of seeing him here like this, standing in front of her, will take a while to wear off. He looks more or less the same as he did, perhaps just a few more lines around the eyes and a slight thinness to the face. A face that’s still infuriatingly triumphant, in spite of everything.

“Would you rather see me in a jail cell?” His voice is tight, Stelmaria looking ready to pounce. “I’m sorry to disappoint.”

And would she rather have seen him in prison? That’s a question she refuses to ask herself, too afraid is she of the answer. The monkey looks longingly at Stelmaria but remains by Marisa’s leg like a child, peering out from her skirt.

“It wasn’t personal,” she says, clipped. “I did what had to be done.”

“Of course,” he laughs, and the sound isn’t quiet as it should be but reverberates off the panelled hallway of a house she has grown to hate. The servants will hear, and she would tell Asriel to keep it down but he is a man with nothing left to lose and she doesn’t think he would care. “Nothing is ever personal with you, is it?”

“That isn’t fair,” she tells him, letting her temper get the better of her. “That is not fair.”

“You don’t get to speak about what is and isn’t fair, Marisa. Not now. I’ve lost everything, haven’t you heard?”

“What about what I’ve lost?” She hisses. “Everything I’ve spent all these years working for is gone in an instant because you couldn’t keep your temper.”

“My temper?” He snorts. “Your silence was revenge and for what? I did exactly as I said I would. I kept my promise.”

_I’ll keep you safe. I’ll make sure you and the child are provided for._

Oh, how safe she had felt at that moment, hadn’t she? How loved. The world had seemed like theirs for the taking. Marisa had lain in his arms and she had believed him. She had believed what had come spilling from his mouth, the promise that there wold be nothing to fear. It’s her own fault, really. She had known, even then, that this wasn’t something even the great Lord Asriel Belacqua could promise. Hadn’t she told him that?

“You made a mess,” she says flatly. “You didn’t have to kill him. This could have been resolved quietly.”

Asriel scoffs and she wonders, in the lamplight, if he has gone mad. His eyes are full of rage, rage against _her,_ and the only way she can deal with it is to become angry right back.

“You are mad if you think that. Something from us, Marisa? It could only have ended the way it did.”

This is what she loathes about Asriel, his insistence that he is always right. He doesn’t know everything, and someone should have found a way to have told him that.

“He was within his right-”

“As was I.”

“You didn’t have to murder him!”

If she was the sort of woman, she would stamp her foot, if only so her frustration could be directed elsewhere other than currently inward. The pressure surges within her chest and it feels like her ribcage will shatter soon into a thousand deadly pieces that nobody will be able to put back together.

She doesn’t care that he killed Edward – that’s not the _point._ It’s the whole mess he created when he did.

“It was him or me,” Asriel continues. His tone is patronising, a way he never would have dared to speak to her before. They have always been equals, sure-footed in their convictions. He has always treated her of equal mind and intelligence and this is why his company was so bearable. This is the first time he has done otherwise and she could kill him for it. “It was him, or it was you and I and the baby. Would you have rather I let him kill us all?”

Her anger at seeing him, at this whole bloody mess, is so profound that she says something she may later come to regret. “It would have been cleaner, that’s for certain.”

He shakes his head, not fooled at all. “If you were in my position would you have done it? When Edward had turned up would you have stood aside and let him have his way?”

No, she never could have. No matter how much easier it might have been, for Edward certainly had the connections to make a murder disappear, she never could have let him do it.

But that isn’t the point. She wants to hurt him the way he has hurt her and so she sets her jaw and says, “Maybe I would.”

Asriel looks like she has slapped him and for a second she thinks she has, can even feel the sting of it on her palm. It makes her feel something other than the shame and the she is glad for it.

“You said that you cared for me but that was a lie, wasn’t it? When it came down to it the only person you chose to save was yourself.”

“Like you did, you mean? You made me choose,” he hisses. Anger burns so brightly in his eyes that the lamps on the wall become useless. “You made me choose and now you’re unhappy with it.”

“You should have chosen differently,” she says flatly.

“You mean I should have chosen you? After that stunt you just pulled you have some nerve to ask that of me. Why would I want to chose you?” He steps closer, and in the half-light he becomes someone she doesn’t recognise at all. “That girl will grow up and be extraordinary and will shame the coward that’s her mother. You will have nothing.”

She laughs and it’s ugly and cruel, everything she feels right now. “I already know what it’s like to have nothing, Asriel. Now you do, too. I hope it hurts. I hope it hurts more than anything ever has.”

The fire in his eyes is extinguished, replaced by something else entirely. “That isn’t possible, Marisa.”

They stand before each other in her dead husband’s hallway and it’s like they’ve become perfect strangers to one another. Asriel usually seems so strong and assured, a man who knows his worth and what he wants to do with the world before him. He always had the means to before. Now he is mere mortal like the rest of them and she wonders how he’ll deal with being cast down.

Unfortunately, he’ll land on his feet. She knows that much. He always does.

The fire isn’t between them anymore. Instead it’s a wind, a menacing breeze that threatens to choke them where they stand. She should tell him to leave, to turn around and leave, that she wants nothing to do with him any longer but she can’t. She hates how powerless she feels before his eyes.

“The girl is with the nuns,” she says lamely.

His laugh is harsh. “I’m surprised you know that.” But then his face sets into something like determination, as though an idea has just formed in his mind. “She won’t be for long.”

“What are you going to do?” She asks, suddenly worried. He’ll cause all sorts of trouble and any trouble with him and with the girl will only lead back to her. No matter what she tries the stain on her name will always be there, but at least she can stop it spreading. If Asriel misbehaves then it won’t matter. Consequences are not something he has ever understood.

“That is none of your concern.” Stelmaria’s tail begins to sway, a gleam in her eyes once again. A sense of purpose has returned. “Lyra and I are none of your concern. Go and climb whatever pole you want to climb. Eventually you’ll fall down again, Marisa. You just can’t help yourself.”

He thinks he’s so clever but he’s forgotten that she’s clever, too. He’s forgotten who she is and what she does.

“You can’t have the girl,” she tells him, and feels the monkey beside her bare his teeth at Stelmaria who does nothing back. “The law won’t allow it.”

“I’m far past caring what the law thinks or does. I’m not letting the church dictate how my own daughter is brought up.”

_A daughter that is only in the care of the church because of what her father did,_ Marisa thinks but doesn’t say. It would roll right off him. Instead she crosses her arms.

“Well if you get to see her then I want access to her, also. You were not the only one involved in her creation.”

“I thought you’d forgotten that fact,” he says mirthlessly. “When I get Lyra, you will have nothing to do with her.”

A sound comes from the back of her throat. “Well that is hardly fair.”

“Don’t pretend that’s the problem you have. You don’t want to be a mother and you made that very clear. Your problem is that I shall have something you won’t, and as long as I do, I shall always have an advantage.”

Asriel has nothing, she must remind herself. He is a desperate man looking to hurt her the way she has hurt him. He will not succeed. He has no advantage over her, not anymore. 

The silence between them is deafening. There have been silences between them before, of course, but it’s not the same. Those silences before were full of comfort, of thoughts and contemplation. This one before them is empty, utterly devoid of anything. It’s because, she realises with some pang in her chest, that there are no words left to say.

“Goodbye, Marisa,” Asriel tells her, and turns around on his heel. Stelmaria doesn’t even give a backwards glance. “Enjoy your climb.”

“I will not fall,” she hisses after him, her voice reverberating around in the dark. “Not a second time.”

(Of course the time will come where they will fall and fall together, and in the dust-light she will cling to him tightly and think yes _of course_ this is how it had to be, and the absurdity of it all will make her laugh until her laughter turns to tears which will eventually, as all things do, turn to dust.)


	3. absolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> '“You have a picture of her.”
> 
> It’s said quietly, but the room was so empty of sound before that she might as well have shouted it. Stelmaria stops pacing and turns her head in time with Asriel to look at Marisa. Their eyes are the same, she notices. The same confused expression that she knows is feigned. Asriel knows exactly what she is talking about. 
> 
> “I saw it,” she continues. “I know I shouldn’t have been looking but I was.”
> 
> He says nothing but the surprise now in his eyes is genuine. His silence isn’t a choice, she realises. He has no idea what to say.'
> 
> Marisa talks and Asriel, for once, listens. Part 3/3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah here we are, the third and final part. I'm so happy to have it out here and I hope you've enjoyed my little project as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you so much for reading and for kudos and comments. It means a lot!
> 
> The third part contains spoilers for The Amber Spyglass. I mean it's technically AU but it also doesn't detract from canon so we all know where they're headed. 
> 
> Title is from the quote and the quote is from Jenny Downham's 'Before I Die'. Quite fitting in a way ;)

_**3\. absolution** _

-x-

Asriel had given her a necklace once.

It was quite beautiful – a slender sapphire on a golden chain. It had fit her perfectly and had matched uncannily with the colour of her eyes.

She had hated it.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” She had seethed. “Wear it around my neck as some mark of ownership that only you can see?”

He hadn’t gotten angry like she had expected him to. Instead he had been very quiet, and if she hadn’t known that he was better than that, she would say that she might have upset him.

“It’s not about ownership, Marisa.”

“What is it about then?” She had scoffed. “Love? You and I know nothing of that.”

He had taken the necklace back and gently placed it in its box. “No,” he had said softly. “It would appear we don’t.”

She thinks of it now as she stands in his room, the worlds falling apart around them. That had been close to fourteen years ago. They were younger then, wilder and angrier. She had thought the anger would have only grown but strangely enough it hasn’t. It was never forgotten but it became something else, something for which she had no name.

Once she thought she hated him but she knows now that she never did. Once she thought she loved him and then she felt betrayed by him and convinced herself it was all a lie. It’s funny how things have changed.

She wonders if Asriel loved her. He said so once, only it wasn’t to her exactly. It was said in the small hours of the morning, when the sky had been inky black and the wind had been howling outside in the prelude of a storm. He had thought she was asleep – he never would have said it otherwise. It was said into her hair and his arms had been around her waist and, stunned by it, she had concentrated on keeping her breathing deep and even and acting as though she hadn’t heard.

It could have been a lie. He might have been caught in the idea, drunk on the power of it all. She remembers the feeling, how invincible they felt together. He might have thought it in the moment and then realised later how he didn’t mean it. It would be hypocritical for her to berate him for it. She wonders if she’ll ever know the answer.

Then, with a start, she realises that this might be her chance, her only chance, to get an answer. The world is falling apart around them and there is an endless abyss beneath their feet. If she asks him, he may just even answer.

She looks over at him. He sits at his desk, papers spread in front, and he stares down at them with a kind of ferocious intensity. But she cannot be fooled. The look on his face is one that has been on her own many times, the kind you get when you stare at something for so long and you just want it to make sense, for the answer to magically appear, but eventually everything becomes black lines on a page and you have no idea what you started with, much less what you’re supposed to be looking for.

The not knowing is killing him, consuming him slowly from the inside out. The madness has drained from him at last. Stelmaria paces from one side of the room to the other. Asriel’s elbows are on the table, hands on the side of his head, and he is so still that from behind one could be forgiven for thinking that he has fallen asleep. The golden monkey hovers beside her, anxiously watching them both.

It’s this quiet and almost-stillness that makes her careless. She always seems to become careless around him but this time it is different. They are at the end of the road, she knows that. It is only Lyra they live for now.

Lyra. The daughter she never knew she loved this much, never knew she loved at all. What a fickle thing, love is. This is why she detests it, has never put much faith in it. This love for her daughter is a new thing and it grows and grows each day, though why she doesn’t know. But Asriel might. The man is softer than she, or anyone else, has ever gave him credit for. Not soft at all, but softer certainly. It’s fascinating.

“You have a picture of her.”

It’s said quietly, but the room was so empty of sound before that she might as well have shouted it. Stelmaria stops pacing and turns her head in time with Asriel to look at Marisa. Their eyes are the same, she notices. The same confused expression that she knows is feigned. Asriel knows exactly what she is talking about.

“I saw it,” she continues. “I know I shouldn’t have been looking but I was.”

He says nothing but the surprise now in his eyes is genuine. His silence isn’t a choice, she realises. He has no idea what to say.

She takes pity on him. “It’s alright. You don’t have to explain. I suppose I would have done the same thing now, if I could. It’s why I took her hair.”

The lock of hair that’s ripped worlds apart and caused this mess that has them feeling this old. But he already knows that.

The picture had surprised her more than anything else ever had in a long time and yet not at all. The love Marisa feels for her daughter is a surprise, and it has surprised nobody more than herself. Finding out that Asriel feels something, something deep enough to bring this picture with him amongst his things to another world when it would appear that he had forgotten his daughter, doesn’t. There was always _something_ , even if she has never always been sure of what it was.

“She must have been awfully young when you took it. A baby.”

“Six months,” he tells her, voice sounding stuck in his own throat. “It was just before Edward came.”

To this day she still has no idea how Edward found out about Lyra, hidden away as she was on Asriel’s estate. Marisa had been once to visit when Lyra was a week old and had never gone back so he couldn’t have followed her. Maybe he had found a letter, or the necklace, or anything else she might have missed, careful as she was. Maybe it was servants’ gossip. Maybe he simply had a suspicion. It’s one of her greatest regrets that she never found out, that Asriel killed him before she could know how she had failed.

The picture is of a tiny wide-eyed Lyra, with a thatch of dark hair and her tiny daemon on her shoulder, an ermine perhaps. She is in the arms of someone cut off by the camera. She looks like she finds the whole world marvellous, and one of her chubby fists is reaching out, to the person taking the picture perhaps, but it seems as though she is reaching out of the paper entirely. There is a look in her eyes of such determination, a dare as if to say _go on, just try and stop me._

Lately she has wondered what she would have been like as a mother, a proper one that had been there for the beginning and the middle, not just the end. She would have loved Lyra eventually, she’s sure of it. She would have loved her and protected her and they wouldn’t be here right now. But there is no point in blame.

“Where is it?” Asriel asks. “The picture. What have you done with it?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing. I didn’t take it. It’s where it always was.”

He relaxes slightly, but not entirely. Stelmaria walks over to him and rests her head on his knee. The bond the two of them have has always intrigued her. She wonders if Asriel would be different if they were not as close, if he were able to stray as far from his soul as Marisa can from hers. She wonders if he would have been able to love Lyra then.

“You always acted as though you didn’t care for her. You acted as though she were an inconvenience.”

“She was.”

Marisa continues as if he hasn’t spoken. “There are so many places she could have gone, if you didn’t care that is. You could have left her with the nuns. If not there then why not with the Gyptians? But you didn’t. You took her to Jordan, where they respect you and admire you and fear you. And you did so because you wanted her safe. You wanted some say in how she was raised. You wanted to always know where she was, and not out of some feeling about property, but because of… love.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. His face doesn’t move. It is, in fact, a miracle he hasn’t upended the table he is sitting at, papers falling to the ground like snow. In any other circumstance he would have yelled by now, stormed out with Stelmaria throwing dirty looks as she went with him. The Asriel she knows doesn’t let anyone speak of such things to him and he doesn’t speak of such things himself. To have him sitting here still, completely unmoving, is proof of how everything has changed.

“You profess to know an awful lot about love, Marisa, considering that you’ve never felt it.”

There’s no anger of bitterness in his voice either. Just a horrible strain, as though he is trying and failing to keep everything buried away.

“You told me you loved me once.” His surprise is so visible in this eerie glow of the room but she takes no joy in it. “Did you mean that?”

Asriel nods, so slowly that if she didn’t know him she would say that he hadn’t answered her question. But she does and she sees it clearly. She has always known him.

“I would have loved you forever.”

She smiles sadly, shaking her head as though the words do not punch her in the gut. She did not expect a worded answer. The monkey slinks his way over to Stelmaria.

“No, you wouldn’t. A while, maybe. Perhaps not even at all. But not forever. You couldn’t. You don’t know how.”

He just looks at her, eyes soft, and she can see why she fell all those years ago.

“There’s only one person you’ve ever loved,” she tells him, as though she’s known all this time, as though she hasn’t just figured it all out in this room. Now that she knows it, she knows it to be the truest thing in the whole world. “One person that you would continue to love no matter what happened.”

Asriel says nothing still. Marisa continues on.

“You and I… we know nothing of unconditional love, or at least I thought so. That’s what drew me to you in some small way. You had just as little clue of it as I did and it made me feel less alone, less cruel. You and I would both put our work above any other life, even our own. We were alike.”

She takes a deep breath, needing the reassurance of it to get her though the memory. There are things, no matter how comfortable she had felt in her arms, that she had never told him, could never have told him. They knew each other’s thoughts but never had to voice them and it’s why she loved him, why it had hurt so much when it had gone away.

“Now I see that’s not the case at all. I know it, even if you do not. You love our daughter and you always have, I suspect. You loved even the idea of her, do you remember? No matter what she has done, what she will do, you will always love her. You could never love me like that. There are limits for you and I. There is a line, and if I ever were to cross it you would cast me down into the abyss with no second thought.”

“Don’t say that,” he says gruffly, and there’s a flicker of pain in his eyes.

“You don’t need to worry, Asriel. It doesn’t hurt me. In fact, it’s almost a relief. The way I feel about Lyra now, how much I love her, I wonder if you felt that her whole life.”

There it is again, that pang in her heart that comes from the thought of her daughter wandering so very far away from her. At least the bomb didn’t kill her. At least there is still a chance.

“You can distance yourself from it, though, can’t you? You can put her aside so she doesn’t tear your heart out. It’s how you’ve managed to survive. You can pretend you don’t feel it, you can pretend your work is all you care about, but you know I’m right.”

“You always think you’re right,” he says, but his voice is still strained and she knows that he’d very much like her to shut up. It’s a shame for him that she’s never been one for pleasing people, least of all him.

“I am about this. I’m surer of it than my own name. You love her and you always will, in a way that transcends anything else. There is no line for her. She could bring about the end of all creation and you would still love her for it. I daresay you would even be proud.”

Marisa feels no need to voice that she now feels this way, also. Asriel knows it by one look at her, she is sure. He always has been able to read her so well, the same way she can read him. She was right, earlier: they should have married and brought Lyra up themselves. This is new to her, this kind of devotion, this love for her own flesh and blood. She is obsessed with it. It terrifies her more than anything ever has.

“I’m not her father,” Asriel says, his voice barely above a whisper. It’s as though it pains him to speak, which in all honesty Marisa imagines it does. Conversations of this sort have never been his forte. “I’ve never been a father.”

“I know,” she tells him, with a slight shrug. “But you love her, still. Before now I could never fathom why.”

She walks closer to where Asriel sits. He’s the source of all this heartache except not really. She touches his face with her hand, cupping it gently, and he does not flinch from her touch like she had suspected he might. His eyes are stormy. He looks older, older than she ever thought he could, as though this has sapped the strength from him. This is how she knows, beyond any shadow of any doubt, that she is right.

“I suspect Lyra is the line,” Marisa says gently, no trace of malice. They are beyond all that, now. “She is as far as you would love me. The way you feel for her outstrips anything else you feel for anyone. You’ve hidden it away all these years but you can do it no longer, not with the way things are.”

It’s almost unbearable to look into his eyes now but she continues to do so. A new form of penance, one that brings her closer to absolution.

She swallows. “I once made you choose between her and I and I lost, terribly. I’ve been losing ever since. I was wrong to think you’d chose me, to think of making you choose at all.”

It’s almost an apology. Only her love for her daughter could elicit such a thing from her. The monkey has his face buried in Stelmaria’s fur. Marisa steps away from Asriel.

“Lyra will win. Lyra will always win.” She smiles and shakes her head. Asriel has never been this silent this long before. She wishes she could enjoy how stunned he is. “You don’t need to worry. I won’t make you chose again.”

He says nothing, still nothing, and she knows he never will. This is the most vulnerable part of himself and even now he will never real it to her. She understands. It’s why, for the same reason, she cannot tell him that she loves him, still.

Marisa is almost at the door, needing to be away from that raw look on his face, but before she leaves, she needs him to know something. She is not who she once was, and so she raises her chin and sets her jaw and looks him dead in the eye, telling him silently that, whatever his plan is, she will be there. She will save their daughter.

There’s a steely determination in her eyes, an amalgamation of everyone she ever is, was, and could be. There isn’t much she can do now but she can do this. She owes them all that much.

“I think,” she begins with finality, with a tone that matches her eyes. “I think I have it in me, perhaps, to lose one last time.”

* * *

* * *

_Then she says, 'I love you.' Like three drops of blood falling onto snow._

* * *

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**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Your kudos/comments are more than welcome and appreciated but I understand you're busy so don't feel obligated :)


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